BCM241 – Mia’s life

The autoethnographic research of mental health tiktok.

PROJECT SUMMARY

Now that this subject and semester are coming to an end it’s time to reflect on and discuss the project that I have done. This semester I decided to continue the project that I started during my very first year of uni which was my TikTok page discussing mental health. Now looking back at my TikTok page it has definitely changed over the 2 years that I have had it. This semester I did more research into the specific media niche of mental health TikTok, more specifically some creators that focus on mental health and are advocates and videos that are popular within the niche.

Taking part in research into my niche has allowed me to understand it from more of an autoethnographic point of view and my audience better. My Tiktok page is to show my life as a 21-year-old living with mental health issues, the whole point of my page was to destigmatise mental health and show especially young women that yes it is hard but we can get through it. TikTok especially is such a growing app with over one billion users on the app monthly it gives creators the opportunity to build a community within their own niches. The wave clinic has described mental health TikTok to great lengths which has helped me understand more about the niche and the advantages and disadvantages of this niche.

LINK TO TIKTOK PAGE

https://www.tiktok.com/@mia.watton?_t=8WsXsJvqYza&_r=1

PERSONA

Looking back on the start of the semester when trying to decide what my public persona would be, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted it to be. When looking at some inspirational accounts on TikTok and Instagram all of these creators were very open, honest and vulnerable about their everyday lives and their battles with various mental health issues. Some of the creators that I decided to take inspiration from: @mary_skinner, @darcyomalley and @alidaballestro, these creators are not fully into the mental health niche but they mostly do days in the life and are very honest about mental health issues. TikTok is the most popular app to use within this niche. I have found with looking at bigger influencers they are more fake and create a perfect life that doesn’t truly exist. Compared to Tiktok, Instagram is more about photos and stories but now is leaning into the video options in the apps with the recently new reel feature available to use, most TikTok creators are utilizing the new reel feature on Instagram.

Now more people are interested in more open and honest individuals showing their true lives and true selves. In the videos that have been posted, I have received comments that have thanked me for sharing something so personal to me and showing the true colours of living a life with mental illness. I wanted my persona to be true and comforting, feeling like I was your friend and we were just facetiming. Moore, Barbour and Lee (2017) explain that online activities and contributing to online behaviour would reshape how we understand and form personal identities, you can say a ‘networked self. As an audience member for mental health TikTok and mental health on other platforms, I have seen multiple types of personas when it comes to mental health, as mental health is a very personal and vulnerable topic, the content that I wanted to create was to be positive and honest.

SUPPORTING RESEARCH

Within this semester I have used autoethnographic research to help me understand and look deeper into the mental health TikTok niche. I have not only used secondary research sources but also looked at the platforms themselves. For this project I have decided to look more into the social media platforms Instagram and TikTok, my DA page is currently on TikTok but I decided to research Instagram as well as TikTok and Instagram have underlying similarities. Through researching throughout the semester I have found that the majority of users are not usually all just about mental health, a lot of mental health creators usually slip into other niches as well, mostly the lifestyle and day-in-the-life creators. The creators that I mentioned above fall into that category as they discuss their mental health but also fall into other niche categories like beauty and lifestyle.

An article in the Washington post discusses how mental health creators are creating their own ethics and using a real-life example of a young teenager Issey Moloney, she was on a waiting list for therapy for years but decided to turn to social media to help her feel less alone. Now Issey is 17 and now she has 5.9 million TikTok followers, with 85 per cent of them being young women between 14-18. Her account focuses on mental health, friends and relationships. She has no official training like most people that discuss mental health including me but everybody is different when it comes to mental health and experiences. Especially since the pandemic social media creators of mental health videos are somewhat filling the health care gap as it makes users feel less alone and it can be a safe community through the apps, this example has shown the evident need for creators like this on social media. Even though it is positive outcomes for these creators and this niche there can be downsides as well as the information being spread can not be accurate or correct or it could trigger some individuals especially if it is sensitive information.

ANALYSIS OF AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE

Being an audience member of this niche even before this project gave me a perfect insight into the audience and their characteristics of them. So I understood what I personally enjoyed watching and the trends that became viral for that specific week. When making my DA and coming up with ideas for my project I wanted to make my videos the type of videos that I enjoyed watching. When posting my content on my page I was surprised with the number of positive comments and feedback received on TikTok which is attached in images in this report. In my previous blog ‘The autoethnographic analysis of mental health tiktok’, I described my audience experiences in more in-depth and epiphanies that I have experienced throughout this semester, discussing my follower behaviour and the comments I received on my posts. I was very surprised to see how people were so friendly and understanding with my own personal experiences and how they started to talk about their own experiences, as I questioned them about how they deal with certain things and to let me know in the comments which they did, this shows that my audience is connecting with me on a personal level which is what I wanted as I wanted it to feel like a facetime with your friends. Even though I didn’t post as regularly as I would have liked I still got a look into the media niche.

PICTURES OF COMMENTS

CONCLUSION

Completing this project has allowed me to understand more about the mental health of TikTok nice by immersing myself in it. It has shown me both the negatives and the positives of this niche as it is something very personal to the individual. TikTok has given many people out there the opportunity to create a platform and be advocates for something like mental health, it has given everyday people the chance to express their feelings and their experiences throughout their life. It has also given mental health professionals the opportunity to help people that may be going through the struggles of mental health as well due to the big healthcare gap in mental health resources. Researching both TikTok and Instagram has allowed me to get a good grasp on the niche and the audience. I hope that my goals for this project came across positively and potentially helped some individuals.

REFERENCES:

Hunter, T 2022, ‘Online creators are de facto therapists for millions. It’s complicated.’, The Washington Post, Avaliable at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/29/mental-health-tiktok-instagram/.

Mileva, G 2022, ‘Instagram Reels vs. TikTok: Which Is the Better Platform for Brand Marketing?’, Influencer marketing hub, Available at: https://influencermarketinghub.com/reels-vs-tiktok/#:~:text=Similar%20to%20TikTok%2C%20Instagram%20Reels,to%20repurpose%20in%20their%20reels.

Moore, C, Barbour, K & Lee, K, 2017, ‘FIVE DIMENSIONS OF ONLINE PERSONA’, Persona Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.1-11.

Premuzic, T.C 2015, ‘How different are your online and offline personalities?’, The Guardian, Avaliable at: https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/sep/24/online-offline-personality-digital-identity

Yassin, F 2022, TikTok and Mental Health, The Wave Clinic. Available at: https://thewaveclinic.com/blog/tiktok-and-mental-health/.

The autoethnographic analysis of mental health TikTok

Mental Health TikTok is a growing niche and community within TikTok. Throughout this semester I have dug a little bit deeper into the media niche of mental health TikTok, by looking at scholarly journal articles, and social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Youtube, to understand more about this community and what drives it to be.

For the past few weeks, I have been posting on my TikTok page @Miaslife discussing my own experiences with mental health and discussing with other people their own experiences as well.

Epiphany 1- Follower behaviour

From the start, I had somewhat of a following on TikTok which helped with receiving views, comments and likes. But even with these followers I still wanted to find more of my niche audience. As stupid as it sounds but I feel like everyone with mental health issues feels like this sometimes but you don’t realise that there are people that feel the same way you do. I didn’t realise that there would be so many people that feel like this and there are just random strangers out there that want to help you and see you succeed which was a bit crazy for me especially since I was just this random uni student just ranting about my feelings which made me feel good about this assignment after all this is to make mental health more of a societal norm but I do love responding and talking to people commenting on my videos just to create more of a personal bond with my followers or audience

I found that my followers like the sit-down vulnerable videos that have what I have down so far and I have received new likes, new followers and comments on those posts. I am still testing out and researching the formats and types of videos that are popular to increase the volume and reach of my audience.

Epiphany number 2- Trigger warnings

TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world with roughly 1 billion monthly users all over the world. So considering this talking about mental health so freely on an open platform has there issues. From autoethnographically researching TikTok and mental health before starting this I had some worry about talking about this topic on social media as it can trigger some people and TikTok can hurt some individual’s mental health, so to help this ethical issue I did put Trigger warnings on most of my videos and I do discuss what my account is about to be completely open and honest. It is better to be careful with what is being put out on social media due to the high volume of teens being users of the app and the effects that TikTok can have (Yassin 2022). But to my surprise, I received some comments that were very positive and happy that I was discussing these topics so open and this gave my followers and audience the opportunity to talk about their personal experiences.

Epiphany number 3 – Talking about mental health on social media

This Epiphany sort of ties to number 2 but I wanted to discuss a personal epiphany that had with making some of my videos. As I already discussed in a previous blog is that this is not a new account or a new project. I started this project in my first year of uni but I wanted to discuss the differences that I have realised this time around. I feel like I am more aware of trigger warnings and more understanding that not everyone is happy to talk so openly about mental health on a social media platform. I have also felt that I am more aware that I putting these videos on the internet for millions of strangers to see, compared to my first year I use to forget that it was to strangers and I felt like I was talking to friends and family which is still what I want to keep doing as I feel like that keeps my content completely vulnerable and authentic but to just be aware of the personal information I put out such as where I live etc.

To conclude, I am really enjoying this project and the autoethnographic research tied to this project and can’t wait to see what else happens with this project and my research within this niche.

References :

SMPerth, 2022, TikTok Statistics for 2022 // Facts & Figures. Available at: https://www.smperth.com/resources/tiktok/tiktok-statistics/#:~:text=TikTok%20boasts%20approximately%20one%20billion,10%20and%2029%20years%20old. [Accessed 12 September 2022].

Yassin, F 2022, TikTok and Mental Health, The Wave Clinic. Available at: https://thewaveclinic.com/blog/tiktok-and-mental-health/. [Accessed 12 September 2022.]

Feedback, what’s that?

In subject 241 we have recently had to comment on our peer’s projects. I commented on Emilia’s, Amber’s and lastly Brianna’s

Critical feedback received by peers can be an amazing way to receive feedback on your strengths and weaknesses this can be quite important to improve on things for the future.

Emilia’s Project is a podcast discussing all things beauty and has an accompanying TikTok account as well.

Amber’s project is an Instagram account for her small graphic design business and researching brands and how social media can be used for their benefit.

And lastly, Brianna’s project is the research of romance/spicy book genre on booktok.

I have always felt like constructive criticism is valuable for any uni student and their projects. Looking at other individuals project personally gives me some amazing ideas and shows me the expectations that I need to have for my own work, for example past cohorts projects.

My comments for my peers were positive and showcased their strengths, but also i wanted to point out what could potentially be improved for them in the future. I did feel like I personally gave feedback as a tutor would have as they were constructive but positive. I also looked at the criteria and making sure that my peers mentioned and achieved the points in the criteria that the assessment guide has provided.

I personally felt like me providing my own research to my peers pitches showed them that I was very interested in their topics and giving them another source to look at and that may potentially help them with their ethnographic research and final projects. I looked into my peers comments to see if they discussed the lecture materials and the readings to see again if they looked at the marking criteria and moodle for other resources.

Such as to go more into detail and discuss more lecture materials and readings, more about ethnographic research and more analytical framework attached to my media niche and more scholarly articles to back up my niche and comments about my niche.

After looking at my peers through this specifc lens i wanted to reflect on my own pitch, i felt like i didn’t go into depth with more research into my niche and need to work on that in future, another problem i have found with my pitch is some grammar and spelling mistakes. Which is an easy fix and makes me more aware for future assignments. Another weaknesses I have discovered is to go into more detail and discuss more lecture materials and readings, more about ethnographic research and more analytical framework attached to my media niche and more scholarly articles to back up my niche and comments about my niche.

I personally feel like a strength from my pitch is i have identified my ethical considerations as my topic can be quite triggering. Another strength i have identified is that i felt like i have aligned myself within my niche as it is something extremely personal to me and my life and i have been apart of this niche for a long time now.

After writing this blog post I now will be more aware of my weaknesses in future blog posts and assignments after using a new lense to identify strengths and weaknesses not only on my own work but on my peers as well.

BCM241 PITCH- Let’s talk about mental health.

In this subject, I will be doing my digital artefact on mental health on TikTok. I am excited about doing this project as it was my DA from previous subjects so I am excited to restart my page and to look more into the ethnographic research side of niches. Mental health TikTok is a specific media niche with a specific audience and has become very popular especially in the last few years with the pandemic.

I have learned a lot from the 241 weekly lectures talking about online personas and how to do ethnographic research in an ethical way. This has made this DA a lot easier in understanding the way research is done in the media and the world of online research (Airoldi 2017). I will also be collecting my data through multiple apps such as TikTok and Instagram to look at the media niche in a broader spectrum then just one platform.

I have created a weekly timeline to keep me on track with my project so I can complete these tasks with no stress or pressure to produce the content that I have planned.

I also have created a field site map, to show all of the topics and things that go into my media niche, so I have decided that TikTok will be my primary medium for this project. My map for my field site looks at production, audience, content strategy and more to look at everything that goes into my media niche.

Lastly conducting a project with ethnographic research included in the project there are some ethical issues that I will need to reflect on when doing this project. I will be doing this project as honest and ethical as possible especially with talking about something like mental health, my video will include trigger warnings.

I am very excited to continue this DA and go more in-depth into the ethnographic research world of my media niche, so please follow along for more.

References:

Airoldi, Massimo 2018. ‘Ethnography and the digital fields of social media’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21:6, 661 -673.

The University of Virginia, Ethnographic research < https://research.virginia.edu/irb-sbs/ethnographic-research#:~:text=Ethnography%20is%20a%20qualitative%20method,how%20societies%20and%20individuals%20function. >

Mapping my media niche

The world of mental health TikTok could be an endless whirlwind of scrolling for hours on TikTok and mapping it could be even harder.

Mental health TikTok is one of the biggest niches on TikTok as this platform gives ordinary people a platform and gives users the ability to connect with other users to create a community based on specific niches, such as beauty, fashion, booktok and mental health. TikTok has over 1 billion users of the app, making it one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, making it very easy to connect and create a following and a community within the app.

To look at mental health TikTok more in-depth and more analytical I divided it into 5 categories:

TikTok as a platform
Audience
Production
Creator Persona
Creator Strategy

I am an avid user of mental health TikTok, so I am already completely fully emerged into the niche already before this subject, So I already have some idea about some topics, trends and patterns within the trend. As ethnographic fieldwork is looking at people in a specific field and studying their behaviours and interactions within the niche (Barone 2020). Looking at my media niche I used ethnographic skills to look more in-depth into the niche. the skills I used were observation and narrowing into more specific things attached to the niche.

My own personal experience within this niche before its subject gave me a really good understanding already of this niche. I have struggled with my own mental health and I always liked these types of videos and this niche as it makes me feel like I’m part of a community, that I’m not alone and also makes me feel motivated through my ruts. I love how this niche all the content can be completely different based on each person, which is what I love about it because it is based on each person’s individual state (good days or bad days). I found that with the audience of mental health TikTok is usually individuals that have their own personal experience and connects with the niche on a personal level which makes them immersed in the niche more easily.

The problems attached to this niche could be the issue of triggers for people, as mental health can be such a trigger and traumatising experience for anybody, do being open and honest to the audience and putting a trigger warning onto more serious videos as discussing more in-depth issues with mental health can be problematising. However, TikTok has become an amazing platform for mental health professionals as a resource to discuss to an audience about mental health such as ADHD, Depression, Anxiety and more. In a Healthline article TikTok is described as “A clear benefit is accessibility of information — TikTok is a free service that anyone with internet access can utilize,” said Naomi Torres-Mackie, PhD, a psychologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

I am excited to look more in-depth and analytical into my niche.

References:

Barone, F. 2020, An Introduction to Fieldwork and Ethnography. [online] Human Relations Area Files – Cultural information for education and research. Available at: https://hraf.yale.edu/teach-ehraf/an-introduction-to-fieldwork-and-ethnography/ [Accessed 17 August 2022].

Heathline, 2022, What to Know About Using TikTok as a Mental Health Resource. Avaliable at: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-to-know-about-using-tiktok-as-a-mental-health-resource#:~:text=TikTok%20has%20become%20a%20platform,Americans%20lived%20with%20mental%20illness%20. [Accessed 17 August 2022].

SMPerth, 2022, TikTok Statistics for 2022 // Facts & Figures. Avaliable at: https://www.smperth.com/resources/tiktok/tiktok-statistics/#:~:text=TikTok%20boasts%20approximately%20one%20billion,10%20and%2029%20years%20old. [Accessed 17 August 2022].

Let’s talk about mental health.

My niche:

Ok, let’s start with my media niche…. Well for me this is quite hard, for some people it wouldn’t be as they would know exactly what they want to do or what their niche is, which is great for them but for me it’s a little bit more difficult.

But, I have decided that my niche that I will be looking at is the TikTok world of mental health, more specifically the videos you see on TikTok that are raw, honest and sometimes aesthetic videos you see of people trying to get out of a rut, daily vlogs (what they are doing day to day to help with their mental health) and more. It is very much a new niche especially when the world went into lockdown and we were stuck inside our houses for months on end. Now still in a covid-19 world more and more people are dealing with mental health issues. Mental health is becoming more accepted and understood in society as Thea Gallagher an assistant professor and director of the outpatient clinic at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety (CTSA) in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania explains that ‘it’s highlighting mental health conditions and bringing awareness to these issues, which are really important’.

Social media is to thank for that, I found from my own experience with mental health it is definitely more excepted now than ever. This niche is quite popular on TikTok and the trend has spread like wildfire moving over to Instagram, Pinterest and youtube. TikTok is quite an influential social media platform with nearly one billion monthly users on the app. With TikTok being a very popular app it is probably the best platform for an interesting project as you can receive feedback almost instantly. I will be focusing on emerging myself into this niche and potentially could grow into an Instagram page.

Personal experience:

From my own experience with mental health, I am wanting to do this project, to discuss my own issues and experiences with mental health. I will be trying to mirror the trends and the aesthetic of this niche. I personally feel that this niche has a presence outside of this platform and social media in general, when I did this project for my first-year subjects it affected my life in general even when I wasn’t filming it made me more positive and motivated as well. It was quite nice as well as it felt like a community almost as if strangers on the internet were supporting me.

My niche will be focusing on motivating and bringing awareness and talking about my own personal experiences with mental health receiving audience feedback from TikTok will give me an indication of what my audience and followers like and what they don’t. when I did this project last year receiving audience feedback gave me somewhat idea of how I was performing and what my audience likes in that niche. There are definitely things I want to do differently from my last semesters with this project such as having a more perfected persona on my page, I still want to be real with my audience but that will be apart of my wanted persona online. Hopefully, as this project grows I can get a better understanding of my audience and how my niche is interpreted by my audience. If you are interested like I am please follow my TikTok and find out! @mia.watton.